Elizabeth Strout Quotes

So are the early unions of an unfixed Marriage: watchful and observant, jealous and busy, inquisitive and careful, and apt to take alarm at every unkind word. For infirmities do not manifest themselves in the first Scenes, but in the succession of a long Society.

It is absurd to expect the inclinations and wishes of two human beings to coincide, through any long period of time. To oblige them to act and live together is to subject them to some inevitable potion of thwarting, bickering, and unhappiness.

I just don't know a couple that's been married more than three years that doesn't annoy the heck out of each other every 15 minutes.

It's axiomatic that all husbands are impossible. But I also think it's axiomatic that women are slightly impossible.

People will always be interested in relationships, infidelity and sex and everything connected to things in their own lives.

I'm romantically inclined. No human being on Earth is not attracted to other people. There is no fairy tale that they only have eyes for you. You just choose to act on it or not.

One person simply can’t be all things to another person – sexually or otherwise—and unmet needs, unfulfilled desire, and unexplored possibilities are prices we pay to be in LTRs (long –term relationships). Monogamous, polyamorous, Femdom, or whatever: All couples people walk around feeling a little unfulfilled. (Single people, too). Because no one gets everything they want.

Bridge is a game that separates the men from the boys. It also separates husbands and wives.

Gamesters and highwaymen are generally very good to their whores, but they are very devils to their wives.

I'm a person who's been in a long-term relationship. It's not surprising that a lot of my friends - whether they're in same-sex relationships or not, whether they're married officially or just in a long-term relationship - have really interesting and various stages in their relationship. My life is looking at these friendships and saying, "Wait a minute, isn't this something really interesting? How can I explore this?"

[On Ronald Reagan:] Jane Wyman seemed more upset with her husband's obsession with politics than I. I tried to make her laugh. 'He'll outgrow it,' I told her. To her it wasn't funny.

I know a lot of people that have been in long-term relationships where cheating has happened, and their marriages and their relationships are actually stronger because it was a mirror that reflected back on a problem that was happening. It's hard.

Alma: I rather suspect her of being in love with him. Martin: Her own husband? Monstrous! What a selfish woman!

Could you really love someone who was capable of falling in love with somebody else?

Men like me because I dont wear a brassiere. Women like me because I dont look like a girl who would steal a husband. At least not for long.

First the husband tried to make the wife his possession, and once she is a possession he loses interest. There is some hidden logic in it: his whole interet was to possess; now that is finished, and he would like to try some other woman so he can again go on another trip of possesion.

She says it's really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are so uncommonly second-rate.

There are good sailors. Well, some good sailors. In a way they are ideal as husbands. They drop in every six months for a wild celebration, then they drop out again before one gets bored with their company or annoyed with by their habits.

I loved you when you were unfaithful; what would I have done if you were true?

As he paid the hansom and followed his wife's long train into the house he took refuge in the comforting platitude that the first six months were always the most difficult in marriage. 'After that I suppose we shall have pretty nearly finished rubbing off each other’s angles,' he reflected; but the worst of it was that May's pressure was already bearing on the very angles whose sharpness he most wanted to keep

I've fallen in love maybe five times in my life. But it's a long life. I do get crushes. Whether it's men or women or babies.

[To woman bragging about having kept her husband for seven years:] Don't worry, if you keep him long enough, he'll come back in style.

And, there are negatives and positives to it. Like, you know, just like a marriage, where you're like, "Well, this... you know, is the sex still as exciting as it was two years ago?"

I kissed him on the cheek and left to find Bobby Lee. Him, I trusted to be in the line of fire. But it was more than that: I wasn't sleeping with bobby Lee. I didn't love him. Sometimes love makes you selfish. Sometimes it makes you stupid. Sometimes it reminds you why you love your gun.